


Defiance — Hikaru Kozakura, the Goddess of Mercy

by The Firelight Magus (Crystalliced)



Series: Spellborne [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23441332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalliced/pseuds/The%20Firelight%20Magus
Summary: A short series of chapters regarding Hikaru Kozakura, and some of the events that shaped her into the woman she is today.Incidentally, all of this is canonical.
Series: Spellborne [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1682548
Kudos: 2





	Defiance — Hikaru Kozakura, the Goddess of Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> This story assumes that you have completed up to and including Chapter 16 of Spellborne (1.3, Actualization). You can still read it despite that, but it's better to have read it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, you're reading updated Defiance.

Hikaru Kozakura. 

One day, that name would become famous across the entire country of Lunaria, known even outside its borders. A name belonging to an incredibly powerful young woman, wielding powers so immense that they could be said to manipulate the border between life and death. She was born to an ordinary enough man and woman, save for the fact that they were deeply in love. Her father was a Lunari, as was her mother. When Hikaru was born, her mother retired — her father, though, determined to continue bringing in income, did not. 

And, when Hikaru was six years old, he met the fate that nearly all Lunari did — death as a result of injuries on the battlefield. Unlike most Lunari, though, he survived long enough to make his way home, poisoned by an unknown substance.

Long enough for his wife and only child to arrive at the hospital. 

Long enough for Hikaru to understand that her father was going to die, and that there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

For a six-year old child, Hikaru was a prodigy, already capable of limited self-healing with her never-seen-before Regeneration aberration. She had never been able to apply those powers to anyone else, though.

And that day, no matter how hard she wished for it, she still couldn’t. 

And so, as the seasons officially transitioned from Wind to Fire, Hikaru Kozakura lost her father. 

And, as she would later come to learn, she’d lost her mother then, too. 

...

Cooking had been the worst task at first, but she found that she could heal any burns no matter how painful they were, and the few times she’d done something wrong enough to poison herself, the sickness vanished within a few minutes. The check her mother received was sufficient to feed and house them, and little else. 

She learned to shop. She learned to take care of the laundry and to clean the house. She wasn’t the only child in Alune under such circumstances — and at the age of eight, not the youngest — but she had to take care of her mother, too, who rarely dragged herself away from her drinking to eat, let alone take care of anything else.

Her late father hadn’t been without friends, though, and one of them came over somewhat frequently. His efforts, though, were focused primarily on Hikaru’s mother, and he had little patience for the precocious young daughter that belonged to another man. She didn’t ever come to trust him as a result.

His son, on the other hand...

Hikaru wasn’t sure what to make of the strange boy with grey hair and greyer eyes, the first time her father’s friend brought him over. He didn’t seem loud or playful, like most of the boys she knew from the Academy, as well as some of the girls. She wondered if something bad had happened to him to make him so quiet, like it had to her, but decided that wasn’t the case. He had one real parent after all, even if he seemed more interested in her mother than either of them. 

“Hi,” she eventually led, staring at him as he sat on the couch and looked blankly ahead. 

He turned to her with a motion that was almost robotic. 

“...Good evening,” he said eventually. 

She tilted her head, unsure what to do after. She couldn’t even tell what he thought of her from his facial expression. Eventually, she sat down, still looking at him curiously all the while. 

“Is there something interesting about the way I look?” He eventually broke the silence. 

“You’re the quietest boy I’ve ever met,” Hikaru replied honestly, before realizing that might come off as mildly offensive. 

The boy didn’t seem to care. “I don’t waste words.” 

“Isn’t talking to me a waste of words?” 

“You initiated the conversation.” 

“So if I stop talking, you’ll stop?” 

He nodded. 

“...Does that mean if I keep talking, you’ll keep talking?” 

He shrugged. 

Hikaru grinned, deciding to accept his gestures as a challenge, and settled in for a long conversation.

...

Takeshi Katsuo. That was the name of the boy she decided would be her first friend. Of course, her greatest struggle was getting him to agree, but it took her less than a week to overcome that particular hurdle. 

“Hey, Takeshi, we’re friends, aren’t we?” 

“No.” 

“I’ll keep asking you until you say yes, you know. It’ll save your time if you just say yes.” 

“I could just ignore you,” he said coolly. 

“But then your life wouldn’t be as fun,” she retorted. “What’re you gonna do anyways while your dad comes over, huh? Stare at the wall?” 

He sat there motionlessly for a while, clearly thinking about her words. By now, she was accustomed enough to his strange behavior to wait for him. 

“Fine. We’re friends. Are you satisfied?” 

Hikaru smiled. “For now.” 

He huffed. “What do you need to be satisfied for a longer period of time, then?”

She blinked, not having anticipated that. “Uh, I guess I’d want to hear something more sincere from you.” 

He digested that for a moment.

“You have many annoying qualities.” 

Her eye began to twitch.

“Overly strong-willed, noisy, too curious, too tomboyish...” 

Hikaru wondered if she could get away with murdering him if she buried his body. 

“But you are not unpleasant to be around,” he said as she began to reach out for his throat. 

She paused. 

“Really?” 

He just stared at her with the same blank expression as usual. Eventually, she smiled brightly. 

“You aren’t half-bad yourself, Takeshi.” 

...

Hikaru was a prodigy. Elemental manipulation was her only weakness, in that she was merely average at it. Everything else, from reinforcement to hand-to-hand to weapons skills, she excelled at. Her natural gifts and drive made it impossible for her to do anything less. The mana that surged through her body at her command was simply better, empowered by her very nature, and so she was stronger and faster than her peers without even trying. 

And she found that she enjoyed her position of superiority. Hikaru worked tirelessly around her now half-hearted care of her mother to maintain her dominance, and to push forward beyond that. By the time she was a sixth-year student, she was the strongest student in the Academy without question.

There was one person though, that if not completely her equal, could challenge her in a certain field...

...

Hikaru grimaced, staggering backwards as she reeled from a punch to the stomach. 

“You’re not putting up as much of a fight as you usually do,” Takeshi noted, lowering his arms. “Are you well?” 

After six years of what could charitably be called friendship, Hikaru had finally succeeded in drawing the Steel Aberrant out of his shell. Though he would never be a socialite, he wasn’t aggressively introverted anymore, either. 

And, over six years, neither of them had ever won a hand-to-hand spar with the other. Hikaru could heal too quickly and use her Reinforcement techniques too well, and Takeshi was simply too durable for her to seriously hurt. 

“Yeah, sorry, just a bit distracted,” she said, the bruise his fist would have left already healed. “Think we could postpone this?”

He shrugged, cutting his own mana flow. “I guess I’m willing to postpone our 275th draw. Distracted by what?” 

Hikaru sat down on the grass, uncaring of the fact that she would probably have grass stains on her Academy skirt. “You remember those group of kids I told you about earlier? The ones that have been bothering me for the last month?” 

“Yes.” Unprompted, Takeshi sat across from her. 

“I think they were the ones who stole my bag last week.” 

He stared intently at her. “That’s a serious accusation. What makes you say that?”

“...Because I returned the favor. Stay out here for a moment.” 

“Hikaru...” Takeshi groaned. 

She returned a minute later, holding a pink backpack by the straps. Unceremoniously, she dumped everything out on the floor. 

“This was from one of the girls. Look, see? My pencils.” 

Takeshi inspected them closely. “They do seem to have your name on them. Though, given the way you found them, I don’t think that you can bring this into a tribunal.” 

“Oh, I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Hikaru said, not meeting his eyes. “I was thinking something along the lines of...retribution.” 

“No. Don’t even think about it. You’re an Aberrant, remember? The rules are stricter for you.”

“For high-risk Aberrants, sure. I’m just a Regeneration Aberrant,” she said, scoffing. “And it’s not like I’m going to kill them, anyways, just kick them around a little.” 

He tilted his head. “Well, it’s up to you. And I’m telling you, there’s no such thing as a Regeneration Aberrant. If you weren’t so childish, I’d call you an Ice Aberrant.”

In a fit of pique, she hurled the empty backpack at his head. He batted it aside with insulting ease, letting it flop to the floor next to him. 

“Seriously, though. The list of aberrations is pretty well known by now, and ‘Regeneration’ isn’t one of them,” he said. “Are you sure you’re an Aberrant and not just freakishly good at healing?” 

“Uh, yeah? I have light pink mana.” 

“That...is actually a pretty good point,” he mused. “I can’t even think of an aberration that has that kind of exotic color. But isn’t that all the more strange? Pretty much everyone else has well-defined powers and attributes. I’m a Steel Aberrant, and I can manipulate steel...well, and—” 

“Hold on,” she said suspiciously. “I know the list of aberrations just as well as you do, and there’s no such thing as a ‘Steel’ Aberrant. But there is a Metal aberration.”

“...No?”

Hikaru narrowed her eyes at him.

“Fine, yes. I call it Steel since it sounds cooler.” 

“So that black metal you always make...?”

“...It’s also cool?”

“Gaaah! You’re such a BOY!” She pulled together enough mana to drag the backpack back to her, and threw it at him once more. 

He deflected it again, looking amused. “That still doesn’t answer the question, though. Just what are you?”

“...Could you word that in a less insulting way?”

“I could.”

She looked at him expectantly.

“But I won’t.” 

She reached for the backpack again, but he hid it behind his back.

“Anyways,” she said, more than a little miffed, “my aberration isn’t dangerous, so—” 

“Didn’t we just agree that we don’t know what your aberration is?” 

“Huh? No? I’m a Regeneration aberrant.” 

“According to who? Who told you that? Where’d you read about it?” 

“Uh, well, it’s on my files.”

“Really?”

Hikaru nodded. “Yep. It’s in my official documentation. I checked...um, maybe a week ago?”

He scratched his chin. “Maybe you’re a brand-new type of Aberrant, then?”

“Yes, I told you! Regeneration!” 

He rolled his eyes. “Sure. Whatever.” 

“Anyways, since my Regeneration—” she glared at him, silently daring him to object, “—aberration isn’t dangerous, I probably won’t get in much trouble if I beat them up a bit.” 

He shook his head. “You’re on your own for this one, then.”

She nodded. Steel  _ was _ on the list of high-risk Aberrants. “Don’t worry, I won’t need your help for this. I just have to make a plan.” 

He huffed. “If you insist, I can’t stop you. But still, stay safe, and try not to get into too much trouble, would you?” 

...

Five days of observation, during which she carried all of her belongings in a scroll that she kept on her person — they were far too afraid to mess with her directly — gave her enough information to decide on a course of action.

The five never travelled alone, and even when they were in pairs, it was always with someone who wasn’t part of their little group. Despite her anger against them, she wasn’t willing to get anyone else involved. She fought one of the five in Wind power duels, but with so many spectators, Hikaru didn’t have the freedom to drag it out as much as she wanted to, or she’d risk getting labeled a sadist. With her as unapproachable as she was, she didn’t want to add that to the list. She didn’t particularly care about what people thought of her, but it might be troublesome later on a team, so she didn’t.

On the sixth day, she stealthily observed someone else — one of the boys’ girlfriends.

“Found it...” Hikaru whispered under her breath. 

...

Anyone else, Hikaru knew, would be horrified at what she’d done. They would condemn her for being petty at best, and psychopathic at worst. Maybe she was a little, she thought on her darker days.

“You knocked her unconscious and shaved her head,” Takeshi said flatly, without the faintest bit of judgement in his voice. “So now what?”

“What do you mean, now what? I win, that’s what.” 

He raised an eyebrow. “They’ll want revenge, obviously.”

“Oh, that? Yeah, I’m sort of counting on it. If they come after me first, then I’m home-free as long as I don’t really badly hurt them.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you think you’re underestimating them?” 

The black-haired girl shrugged. “No? The five of them together are only barely in the top half of the class. Even if they ambush me, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be fine. Nothing they can do to me that would actually stop me for more than a moment would be allowed, and if they break the rules...” Hikaru’s gaze darkened. “Then I won’t follow them either.” 

He glanced at her, concerned. “Want me to walk with you from now on?” 

She smiled at the thought, but shook her head. “No thanks. I don’t think you’re a target, and I don’t want to make you one. Besides, we’re not in the same class. I’ll be fine.” 

“If you say so,” he said, clearly unconvinced. 

...

When a few weeks passed with no further incident, Hikaru decided that they had given up and stopped worrying about it entirely. Instead, she put her energy into deciphering another one of her father’s many journals. They weren’t hard to read — the man had always had neat handwriting, a habit most Lunari developed for their written reports — but putting the knowledge into practice wasn’t always simple. 

Case in point — the most recent one Hikaru was reading through, regarding something called a Mindscape. After over a year and a half of study and practice, she was certain that she was getting close to a complete visualization of her Mindscape. Her problem, though, was focus. She couldn’t block out all the thoughts in her head, no matter how much she tried. 

“A secret technique that lets you visualize better?” Takeshi asked skeptically, cooking on his stove. His home was virtually identical to hers — then again, almost every house in the Inner Ring shared a similar design. 

“Amongst a bunch of other things,” Hikaru said, lounging lazily in her chair at the dinner table. Eidetic memory, multiple thought streams, a perfect sense of time, an ability to track one’s mental and spiritual health...and another step forward on her father’s journey. 

And maybe, she thought privately to herself, she’d be able to understand her Aberration more with it. 

“I guess you’d want to start with meditation, wouldn’t you?” 

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying, but it isn’t working. Or, rather, it’s not working enough.” 

“Too hyperactive?” he asked dryly. 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Let me guess, you’ve been trying whenever you feel like it without putting much thought into it?” 

“Um, sort of...” 

“Yeah, that’s no good. Your body isn’t ready.”

“Huh? But isn’t it my mental state that matters?” 

He hummed, the sound barely audible over the sound of sizzling butter. “Remember your Awakening?” 

“For my Wind Affinity? Oh! Like how I went to the top of the cliff because of the breeze? But I did that because there was a lot of Wind Mana there.”

He shook his head. “Maybe that’s why you struggle with elemental manipulation so much.” 

“Hey!” 

“Look, just try it. Yes, you’re making a mental construct, but you need as much synchronization between your head and heart as possible, especially since you’re not good at this kind of thing to begin with. Make a schedule. Since you’re creating something...probably morning, then. Certain days only. Don’t let anything interrupt you, and do it at the same place every time. You want to make sure your body understands what you’re there for. That should help, especially to a scatterbrain like you.” 

She didn’t even react to the insult, absorbing his advice carefully. “You’re...kind of reliable, aren’t you?” 

He shrugged. “I pay attention in class. Do my own research. Everything’s just...a series of interconnected parts. You just have to know how to put them together.” 

Hikaru smiled, a little enviously. “I wish I had your brain.” 

“No, you don’t,” he said quietly, then, a little louder, “and, besides, you’re a genius too in your own right. Just...differently. Less mechanical.” 

He wasn’t wrong, she knew. Whereas he had an analytical genius, she had an intuitive one — things just clicked for her, even new things she’d never done before. It was why she was so frustrated that this, of all the things, wasn’t. 

“How about you get some food in you first?” Takeshi said, putting her plate down in front of her. She looked down and choked in laughter. 

Staring up at her was a pancake with chocolate chips layered on top, depicting a crude smiley face. 

“Chocolate-chip pancake,” he announced. 

“Pancake with chocolate chips,” she disagreed, still laughing. 

To Hikaru, they were wonderful.

A few days later, as she looked at her completed Mindscape, she thought to herself that it had been less about the food and more about the person she’d eaten them with.

...

Hikaru had thought she was free, but they hadn’t forgotten. They had just planned. And she’d woefully underestimated them, and the resources they’d had at their disposal. 

Even a week after, her memories hadn’t come back in full. She remembered coming down from the rooftop after a lunch period. She remembered a paralysis seal, carefully etched into the metal of the door. The shock was small, but the fall down to the bottom of the landing shook her up long enough for someone to slam something hard into the back of her head. 

She remembered blacking out. She remembered waking up again, in the same place, her shirt a little wetter, but nothing seeming out of place. She knew she’d been attacked, and she even had a good idea of who had done it, but she hadn’t been sure of what had been done to her, and that had been the scariest thing. 

But then, that first night...she’d stepped under the shower, turned the water on...and promptly forgot how to think. 

Before she’d known what was going on, she had scrambled away from the spray with wide eyes, chest heaving as her heart raced. She tried to move, but she couldn’t. Her body wouldn’t respond to her. Her throat locked up, refusing to breathe even with her mouth wide open, and somewhere in the back of her head she registered that she was screaming silently, or maybe not so silently, but the only thing she could hear was the pouring of the water and— 

Hikaru pulled herself out of her memories forcefully, resisting the urge to scream. She mostly succeeded, only an pained hiss escaping her. 

“Please, Hikaru, tell me what’s going on,” Takeshi pled, sitting across from her at the dinner table once again. 

“I can’t.” 

“Are you being blackmailed? Silenced in some way? Or—” 

“Takeshi.”

“Yes?” 

“I need to handle this. On my own.” 

He stared at her. “That expression on your face...you’re going to do something stupidly dangerous, aren’t you?” 

She smiled wanly. “Probably.” 

“Then take this.” He dug into his pockets, and pulled out a small, black metal disc on a simple, thin chain. “It’s a new alloy I’ve been working on. It won’t break from low-grade physical force, but it’s a lot weaker if you infuse it with mana first. You break this, and I’ll drop whatever I’m doing and come to help.” 

She almost rejected it out of hand — not because she didn’t think he could be useful, but because she still —  _ still _ — wasn’t sure what had been done to her, and she didn’t think she could bear it if he got hurt like her, too. 

With a bit of shock, she realized that she’d seriously come to actually care about him. 

So she took the necklace. Though she still affirmed to herself that she wouldn’t use it if the time came, she knew it would make him feel a little better about it, at least. And if he knew what she was thinking as she clasped the chain around her neck, he didn’t say. 

...

Late at night, Hikaru snuck out of her house and went to the Southern Waterfalls. The name was a bit of a misnomer — the so-called falls were barely ten meters high, but they did empty out into a basin, which in turn drained into a river. Perfect for what she wanted, in other words. 

She stood on the stone slabs facing the basin, dressed lightly, and tried to convince herself to dive, to overcome her fear. But no matter how hard she screamed at herself, her body refused to move, completely and utterly motionless save for her own panicked breaths. 

“You look quite troubled, young lady.” 

Hikaru whirled to see an older man in his fifties or so with icy-blue eyes, short, greying hair, and dressed in a black cloak. 

“Really? What gave it away?” she retorted without thinking, then paused and called the nearby Wind Mana to her. “And who are you? What do you want with me?”

He snorted. “Settle down. You’re about twenty years too young for me. As to who I am...well, you might know me as the Wind Spellweaver of Alune.”

Her eyes widened. “Daisuke Hirakaze?”

“The one and only.” 

Hikaru narrowed her eyes. “So why are you here, then?” 

He shrugged. “You were standing here on my last lap around Alune. You were still there when I got back. I’m obligated to see if you were planning on offing yourself.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, “what kind of maniac would willingly choose drowning as their method of suicide when a spike of mana through the head would be cleaner and faster?” 

He raised an eyebrow. “Dark thoughts, those.” 

She shook her head. “Just obvious.” 

“Well then, young lady, just why are you here?” 

“It doesn’t matter to you,” Hikaru said dismissively. “Don’t you have anything better to do than harass a young girl at night? Creep.” 

He chuckled. “Not when said girl was trembling in fear before I touched down. It’s the water, isn’t it?” Hikaru tried and failed to hide her surprise. “I thought so. I’ve seen similar things, but not with someone who hasn’t seen war...” His eyes flashed with an emotion she couldn’t recognize in time. “So what were you here for? Exposure therapy?” 

Hikaru didn’t respond, torn between anger and shock.

“Well, let me help you with that.” 

Before she had appropriately processed just what that meant, a burst of Wind slammed her backwards — directly into the water. 

Dimly, Hikaru was aware that she was submerged underwater. That part of her brain, though, took a backseat to unadulterated panic, her thoughts scattering away before she could grasp any of them. She screamed instinctively, but that only made things worse as water flooded her airway, and— 

And then she was free of the water, landing hard on her hands and knees as she choked. Foreign mana flooded her, forcefully drawing the water from her lungs before she could think to block it, and then she could breathe again.

“Center yourself, girlie,” the words penetrated her hazy thoughts, and she unthinkingly followed them, submerging herself into her Mindscape. She was thrown out almost immediately, of course, far too unfocused to manage a proper visualization, but the act of it soothed her nonetheless, and she was nearly coherent within a few seconds. 

“Good, very good,” Daisuke said, his voice low and soothing. “Look at me.” 

She did. A look of genuine anger flashed across his face. 

“You’ve been tortured, haven’t you?” 

“I don’t know,” Hikaru whispered hoarsely, too shaken to deflect like she normally would. “I think so, but I can’t remember.” 

“No, you can remember. You just can’t access those memories right now. You have a Mindscape, don’t you?” 

Hikaru stiffened in shock. “How did you—?”

“A guess, but you confirmed it,” he said impatiently. “Those thoughts are there, and you can find them. But you’ll have to find them, if you really want to see it.”

“I don’t want to.” 

He shook his head. “I’d think you were insane if you did. Now tell me, who did this to you?”

She shook her head. “I won’t tell you.” 

“Why not? What, do you want to protect them? Or—” 

“Because it’s  **my** revenge,” Hikaru snarled, glaring fiercely at him. She expected judgement or condemnation, but he just stared blankly at her. “And you should stay out of it!” 

Eventually, she finally detected an emotion in his face.

Approval.

“And how do you plan to stop them from simply throwing water onto you?” he asked curiously. 

She gestured angrily behind her. “That’s what I’m working on.”

He shook his head. “Your dumb ass would have probably drowned if I didn’t find you. Exposure therapy is meant to be controlled and systematic, and what you’re doing isn’t it. Oh, but if I was wrong, and you had any semblance of control as you were swallowing water, let me know, and I’ll throw you back in.”

She didn’t have a response to that. 

“It doesn’t sound like you have the time — or the will — for proper exposure therapy. What you need is a way to assert control over yourself.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “And if I wanted that, what would you want from me in return?” 

He shrugged. “Nothing.” 

“I don’t believe you,” Hikaru retorted. 

“You don’t have to. If you want to go back to drowning yourself in the waterfalls, I’ll leave right now so I don’t get fingered as a murderer,” he shrugged again, turning away. “But if you’re tired of being weak, tired of letting other people control you and use you...just say so. And I will teach you.” 

He prepared to take off, crouching— 

“...Wait.”

He paused.

“Teach me. Please.” 

He nodded sharply, turning around and staring at her for a moment. Hikaru stood proudly, determination blazing in her eyes and her lips set into a narrow line.

“What do you know about Etheria?”

...

Not even a day later, the ambush came. She’d been lost in thought over what Daisuke had told her, and by the time she realized that the school was empty and that she was alone, the group was already springing into action. 

She hadn’t been ready. 

Katsuo would have known, one part of her mind thought as the rest of it all but fell apart, he would have known to expect them to attack with Water. She drowned, trying to claw at her throat, instinctively trying to force the water away, but it didn’t move, and— 

...

Ichigo Amare was torn. 

Certainly, she’d been angry when her bag was taken, especially because she hadn’t done much of anything to merit it. And she’d been even more upset when it had been found underneath her desk — in sixteen pieces. The belongings that it had contained were nowhere to be found, including her class notes, and she’d already been struggling in some of her studies. She’d had to lean heavily on some of her friends’ notes in order to catch up, and she’d even needed to go to the library for the first time in two years, an experience she hadn’t enjoyed at all.

And sure, she’d been one of the ones in favor of stealing Hikaru’s bag first, but not out of any particular malice. She’d just wanted to help eliminate some of the competition to ensure her entry into seventh-year. Of course, she wasn’t so dumb as to think stealing a backpack would make any difference at all, but it would certainly slow her down a little, she’d thought, and she hadn’t needed to do anything to make it happen. 

And some of Hikaru’s notes had been really interesting — at least, the ones that had been shared with her. Seal theory had become so much easier with her personal notes on the subject. 

What had really made her mad, though, was when Serena had been assaulted. She had definitely not done anything wrong — she hadn’t even known about the whole mess — and Ichigo had been the one who’d stayed up in order to comfort her. Even now, the girl didn’t feel safe walking home by herself! That, she’d thought, was far out of line, and so when they’d planned how to get her back for that, and to make sure the psychopath didn’t hurt anyone else, she hadn’t held back.

They needed a way to get around her healing factor and general alertness. Ichigo had suggested a paralysis seal, and had even done the actual carving for it. 

They needed a way to keep her down. Ichigo had suggested throwing her down a flight of stairs to keep her busy before knocking her unconscious with a traumatic blow to the back of her head. 

And they’d needed a way to punish her. Ichigo, having newly done research on historical methods of interrogation, had suggested  _ waterboarding. _

Hearing Hikaru’s tortured screams as they’d poured the water over the cloth — she hadn’t wanted to stick around for the actual work — had vindicated her. Had avenged poor Serena. She was of course aware of the longer-lasting effects of waterboarding, but she hadn’t much thought about it. They hadn’t seemed real when she was just reading about it. 

It had been her that suggested that, if they were going to attack her once more, that they should strike at that weakness. And she’d been the one to suggest using seals once again to suppress the sounds coming from there, so that they wouldn’t get caught. 

As Ichigo watched Hikaru collapse from nothing more than a thrown bucket of water, the first thing that she felt wasn’t satisfaction, like she’d expected.

No. Instead, she felt horror, horror at the way such a strong girl had been brought to her knees by so little. Horror, regret, and shame. 

“Where are you going, Ichigo?” one of them asked as she picked up her bag and turned away. 

“I don’t feel well,” she said, truthfully. “I’ll meet up with you later.” 

“Oh, okay. Feel better soon!” 

She wondered at the way that they could say that so brightly, even with the sounds of Hikaru shrieking madly in the background. 

Ichigo wondered if she ought to look for new friends. 

Later, she learned that the choice had been taken away from her.

...

Etheria, Daisuke had told her, could create miracles. All she had to do was  _ want _ , want so hard that she was willing to give up a little of her life. 

Hikaru hadn’t heard anything like that before. In the Academy, Etheria was simply described as one’s life energy. In the library, she had looked for further resources on it, and found absolutely nothing. Later, she’d learned that the field was woefully underexplored, and vowed to fix that.

Daisuke had explained, though, of the Altherians, the people who’d come before the Lunarians, and even the Lunarians’ own descendants, the Arcacians. He’d explained about Conduits and Guardians, the precursors to the modern-day Magi and Manaweavers, fearsome warriors who wielded their own life energy with frightening ease. 

Hikaru had demanded to know why this hadn’t been covered in the Academy. Daisuke had looked at her like she was an idiot and mocked her for not understanding why Lunari would be discouraged from burning out their lives. 

Still drowning, she wasn’t consciously aware that she wasn’t capable of rational thought. Luckily for her, she didn’t need to be. All she needed to do was create a little miracle, and Daisuke had taught her over the course of the night to become aware of her Etheria, and then to use it. 

And then, before he’d left, he’d told her two words that changed everything. 

“Etheria Aberrant.”

Most of Hikaru wasn’t capable of rational thought at that moment, but enough was. Just enough for her to want the water gone. Just enough to want to punish her attackers, a group of people malicious enough to torture her, to try to break her. 

Hikaru tapped into her Etheria, and wished for them to  **burn.**

A concentrated pulse of unnatural crimson flame erupted from her, evaporating the water surrounding her. Unluckily for her, she didn’t have the focus to catch all of them, and the pulse travelled less than ten centimeters outwards before dissipating, a pitifully short distance. 

For the boy in the process of punching her across the face, though, ten centimeters were far too close. His hand vaporized instantly, leaving behind a cauterized, misshapen stump. He opened his mouth to scream — then Hikaru’s fist slammed into his cheek and through it, pulping his head like a grape. 

The Etheria Aberrant coughed, steam hissing from the inside of her throat, then staggered slowly to her feet, malevolent mana swirling around her. With a thought, all of her injuries faded in an instant. 

“D-D-Demon...” someone whispered, the rest of them staring in horror, too stunned to even scream. 

Hikaru grinned as she gathered her power again, ready to create another bloody miracle. 

“No. I’m  **retribution.** ”

...

Takeshi felt the sharp tug in his mind that meant one of his amulets had been broken. It didn’t take him longer than a second to pinpoint where, and when he realized who it had belonged to, he immediately turned and began running back to the Academy. 

Two minutes. It took him two minutes to arrive and get past the pair of guards, citing a forgotten bag — he’d dumped his in an alleyway just prior. 

As he slipped past, though, an explosion blew out one of the second-story windows, nearly throwing him to the ground and stunning the guards behind him. He quickly scrambled to his feet, then quickly chased after the adults.

When he’d arrived, though, he was stunned into silence for a moment.

“Here to stop me?” Hikaru asked, an unhinged smile on her face and a malevolent aura radiating from her. She was dripping in blood that obviously didn’t belong to her. He glanced around, looking for bodies. 

When he found them, he wished he hadn’t looked. 

“Get backup. Code pink,” one guard murmured to the other. “Now.”

The other left quickly, and with more than a little shock, Takeshi realized that the remaining man seemed to be preparing for...a fight to the death? Just what was going on?

“Kid, get out of here,” the guard told him. “Or she’ll kill you.” 

“She wouldn’t,” Takeshi said firmly.

The man grit his teeth, clearly annoyed. “Kid, you see the mana coming off of her? She’s an Aberrant, and one that’s gone out of control. I don’t care how—” 

“I know better than you might think,” Takeshi said coolly, raising his hand and showing off metal-tipped fingers. “Let me handle this.” 

The guard stared for a moment, then shook his head with annoyance. “Tch. Fine. Your funeral.” 

The boy stepped up to her, watching her cautiously and hiding his shock at the fact that her eyes were strangely violet as opposed to their normal chocolate brown. Hikaru didn’t stop him from approaching, watching him step over one of the corpses of their classmates, and the sense of oppressive power diminished as he drew closer. Eventually, he stood only a meter away from her.

“...Hey,” he said, not sure where to begin. 

“How’d you know to come here?” she asked, a curious look on her face, as if she wasn’t surrounded by four corpses, most of them missing limbs or heads. 

“Your amulet broke.” At his words, her hand moved up to touch her neck, finding it empty. 

“Ah. I should have realized.” 

“You’ve always been a little careless about the smaller details.” 

She smiled. “So why are you here?”

He gestured vaguely around him, but she shook her head.

“I meant here. In front of me.” She stared at him with those piercing violet irises. “Why aren’t you scared of me? You should be scared.”

He shrugged. “Do you suddenly want to hurt me?”

Hikaru blinked. “No, but—” 

“Then I don’t have anything to worry about, right?” 

She stared at him helplessly. “That’s...that’s not how that works.”

“It’s how it works for me.”

She laughed, apparently finding his words funny somehow. He didn’t really get it, but patiently waited anyways for her to stop.

When she looked back at him, her eyes were brown again. “I...I found out what they did to me, I think. Have you heard of waterboarding?”

He hissed in shock. “They—?! To a classmate?!” 

She shrugged, a sad smile on her face. “It’s the only thing I can think of. That, or they drowned me manually over and over again. But that’s why...” A haunted look passed over her face. “When they came after me today, they threw a bucket of water in my face.”

“And you...lost it.” 

Hikaru nodded, looking tired. “Yeah. That’s...yeah. Sorry, Takeshi. I told you I wasn’t going to kill them. But I...”

He shook his head. “I don’t care.”

She staggered forward, the energy seeming to rush out of her, and the Steel Aberrant only just managed to move forward fast enough to catch her as she fell into his arms. 

“...I’m scared,” Hikaru whispered. 

Takeshi couldn’t think of a way to reassure her without lying, so he didn’t bother trying, awkwardly holding her instead and slowly becoming increasingly aware of an audience behind them. Her breathing eventually evened out, becoming slow and deep. 

A long whistle behind him made him turn, still awkwardly holding the sleeping girl up. There were well over a dozen Lunari by then, staring at the pair with varying amounts of wariness, confusion, and amusement. 

“You considered becoming a negotiator, kid?” A man with graying hair walked up, suppressed power rolling off of his shoulders. 

“Never. I’m a Steel Aberrant. Waste of time.” 

He shrugged. “You managed her just fine. We’ll need to take her in for questioning, but I think in light of her instability and your control over her, you’d best accompany them. Your parents...?”

“They won’t care,” Takeshi said, not even bitter after a decade of neglect, “so no need to inform them. Same with hers’.” 

“Alright. Saves us the time. Put her on your back, and follow me.” 

Takeshi nodded, doing as he said. He missed the satisfied smirk that crossed Daisuke Hirakaze’s face. 

...

Hikaru’s return to consciousness was slow. The first thing she noticed was the stiffness that came with a lot of sleep — too much. Her eyes fluttered open, revealing a grey, metallic ceiling. 

Adrenaline rushed through her, and she sat up quickly, observing her surroundings. Surrounding her were walls of grey metal — metal that dampened her ability to manipulate mana, she realized with a spike of alarm. In front of her were steel bars, too close for her to squeeze through. 

“You’re awake,” a familiar voice said from next to her, and she spun around, surprised. What she saw, though, made her relax a little.

“Takeshi? Why are we...?” she trailed off as she remembered what she’d done. 

He just stared at her, a look of sympathy on his face. “How are you feeling? You channeled quite a bit of power, there. You must be feeling a bit sore.” 

She shook her head. “Not really. That...”

_ “Etheria Aberrant? What’s that?” _

_ “Something that’ll make you a target. It’s the rarest form of Aberration, and no one knows anything about it. You’re the kind of child who’ll only come around once every few centuries, now.”  _

_ “So...what do I do? I have to hide it, right?” _

_ “Kid, you’re way too late for that. Every important adult knows your status. It isn’t like the occasional missed Ice or Steel Aberrant — anyone who knows what to look for will be able to find it, even if they didn’t already know.”  _

_ “So people are going to try to control me then, huh?” _

_ “Oh, yes. That fate is unavoidable for someone like you.” _

_ “Then what am I supposed to do about that?!”  _

_ “Isn’t it obvious? You grow strong, so strong that no one can even think about controlling you anymore.” _

_ “But how? No one can teach me, right? If there’s only one Etheria Aberrant every few centuries...?”  _

_ “Foolish girl. We may not all be able to use it as naturally and as seamlessly as you will be able to, but that doesn’t mean that knowledge has been lost. At least, amongst certain people. Luckily for you, I am one of those.” _

_ “And you’re willing to teach me? Why?” _

_ “Every child like you, girlie, has grown up to be either something wonderful or something terrible. But always something great, whether good or bad. And I have a vested interest in making sure that you decide to be the former, not the latter.” _

_ “I...need time to think about this.” _

_ “Certainly. Take all the time you need. Sooner rather than later, though, you’ll need to learn, and it’ll be better that you learn from someone who actually knows what they’re doing.”  _

“Hikaru?” 

The girl blinked. “Sorry, what? I...lost track of what was going on.” 

“For three minutes?” Takeshi leaned forward, concerned. 

“Y-Yeah. I’m fine, though.” 

He looked at her skeptically, but let it slide. “I guess I’ll update you on what’s going on, then. We’re...well, you in particular, but I’m along for the ride — we’re in jail.” 

“Explains the shoddy interior decorating,” Hikaru said weakly, trying not to think about anything else.

He snorted. “I don’t think you’re in serious trouble — when the guards were looking for witnesses, they found a girl — Ichigo Amare, she’s one of my classmates — and she spilled everything. I heard the interrogation from here. You were right — it was waterboarding. But anyways, because of her confession, you’re not going to be in nearly in as much trouble as you could have been. Actually, it sounds like they want to keep this hushed up — they made her sign an NDA. I also had to, actually, and I’m sure they’ll make you do it too.” 

She shrugged. “That’s...good. What else?” 

“That’s pretty much it. They’ll want to question you obviously, but that needed to wait until you woke up. You’ve been unconscious for...seventeen hours.” 

“Well, I’m awake now, right? I guess we’d better just get this over with.” 

He stared at her curiously, but decided not to say whatever he was thinking about. “I suppose so. I’ll let them know.”

“How—?” 

He reached up to his neck, pulled out another amulet, and pinched it between his fingers, the metal shattering into pieces before dissolving into mana.

“I don’t need mana to dismiss my own power. They’ll be here in a few minutes, most likely.”

“Okay.” 

The two sat in silence for a moment. 

“Hey, Takeshi?” 

“Hm?” 

“I’m not a good person, am I?” Hikaru asked softly, an unreadable look on her face.

He shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong person for something like that.” 

“You’re really...not scared of me?” 

He smiled slightly, perhaps the first time he’d ever done so in front of her. “I’m not. Really. A bit surprised at how vicious you could be, but scared? No. You didn’t lash out at me, after all.”

She digested his words, then voiced the thought she’d had. “Even if I told you that I don’t feel bad for them?” 

He shrugged again. “Not like I do either.” 

A contemplative silence followed for a few moments before Hikaru reached out and interlaced her fingers with his. He let her, glancing at her curiously. 

“Thank you,” she said sincerely, eyes a little bright. 

He nodded, squeezing her hand in lieu of a verbal reply. 

That was the scene that Daisuke Hirakaze walked in on. He didn’t say anything though, merely pressing a hand against the seal-based lock. The steel bars keeping them there vanished. 

“You two must be hungry. Come out. We’ll talk over food.” 

Hikaru eyed the man warily. “How are you here all the time? It’s like you have no other responsibilities.”

The man chuckled. “You should already know.” 

Hikaru closed her eyes. 

_ Power is control,  _ he’d told her. 

It shouldn’t have surprised her that the Wind Spellweaver, one of the only two living Spellweavers in Alune, would have the ability to do practically whatever he wanted, or so it seemed.

_ So that’s the kind of strength I need _ , Hikaru thought to herself.  _ I need to become a Spellweaver. Maybe even an Etheria Spellweaver, whatever that might look like. _

Daisuke led the two of them out of the facility and to a simple restaurant. There, he ordered for all three of them, not bothering to ask what they wanted. Hikaru was too tired to care — she just wanted to fill her stomach, then go home and lie in a bed. 

“Miss Kozakura,” Daisuke stated flatly, “I have the conditions of your release. Consider this a bargain of sorts.”

Hikaru nodded. 

“Your first option is to accept your full sentence, and the consequences thereof. You’ve been charged and convicted of four counts of voluntary manslaughter, and your punishment would involve two years of jail time, two years of mandatory community service, two years of mandatory psychological conditioning, and you would not be allowed to apply for any job that involved teaching or healing.” 

She flinched. 

“The alternative is that you immediately enter a five-year apprenticeship under me. You would need to graduate with my approval, and dropping out at any time for any reason would be constituted as you preferring the first option. If you choose this option, your crime would not be added to the record and you would not receive any further punishment.” 

“What the...what kind of proposition is that?” Takeshi immediately protested. “That’s totally lopsided! And you could just arbitrarily revoke the apprenticeship at any time!”

Daisuke shrugged. “I most certainly could, but that doesn’t mean I will. That would be a waste of my time.”

“But why you?” Takeshi protested.

“Because he can control me,” Hikaru said dully, but her eyes were fierce as she glared at the man. 

“I’m trusted to control you, yes, considering your unique circumstances,” he agreed, meeting her angry gaze without flinching. “Make no mistake, Miss Kozakura, you’re in trouble. You need to prove you’re stable, and there’s only two options for that. And please be warned — at the end of that psychological conditioning,  _ you will never be the same again. _ ” 

“Not much of a choice...” she muttered, almost too softly to be heard. 

“What’ll it be?” Daisuke asked coldly. Hikaru looked up, blazing fire in her eyes. 

“You should already know. Sir.” 

...

Hikaru returned to class. Ichigo Amare did not. News didn’t spread — apparently those NDAs were being taken very, very seriously — but rumors were everywhere, and Serena Akino, she later heard, transferred out. 

People weren’t sure what to make of her, anymore, and generally avoided getting too close. Hikaru couldn’t be bothered to care — she had many more worries in her life than school, and she wouldn’t be able to join a team as a result of her mandatory apprenticeship. 

Takeshi continued eating with her at lunch as if nothing had changed, but then again he’d always been a shut-in regardless of her influence, and so his life didn’t meaningfully change either.

Well, there was one small thing...

...

“Takeshi.”

“Hm?”

“I love you.” 

“...oh.” 

“Ehehe. Don’t worry about it. I just wanted to tell you. You don’t have to do anything about it, kay?” 

“Alright.” 

...

A few days later, Hikaru received a letter directing her to come to a certain training ground. Reluctantly, the young Etheria Aberrant made her way there. 

“Oh, don’t look so angry, Miss Kozakura,” Daisuke said, chuckling. “This is for your own good.” 

“Fuck you,” Hikaru said flatly. 

“Far too young for my tastes,” the man retorted. “Now, before we start, we’ll need to set some ground rules.” 

She sighed, exasperated. “Fine. Like what?”

“I’m getting to it,” he said, blatantly amused by her temper. “First and foremostly, your development from here on out is controlled by me. If you learn something new — hell, if you’re even interested in something — you tell me first, and I’ll tell you whether or not you should pursue it.” 

“What? Why?!” Hikaru demanded.

“Because you’re too foolish to know what’s good enough for you and what isn’t, as your careless attempts at exposure therapy proved to me. But you want a more real example? Something closer to home? Reverie Disorder.” 

“What’s that?” 

“The consequences of you bumbling into a Mindscape. Who the hell taught you?” 

“I — no one. I figured it out myself.”

“That’s the second ground rule,” Daisuke said sharply. “You do not lie to me. I do not lie to you. I’ll tell you if I can’t tell you something for one reason or another, but no lying. It is a waste of time. Understand?” 

Hikaru ground her teeth together. “Fine. It was my dad, okay? He left behind some journals after he...and one of them involved the Mindscape. I thought it looked interesting and so I started teaching myself. Satisfied?”

He nodded. “You didn’t have a proper teacher, then. That makes sense. The Mindscape is a dangerous technique and you are most likely about to run into one of its major risks.”

“Reverie Disorder?”

“Yes. Since the time you were waterboarded and developed your Mindscape, have you ever spaced out against your will?”

Hikaru thought back to the time she’d been imprisoned with Takeshi. “Once. But it hasn’t happened since then.”

“It will,” Daisuke promised. “What you experienced was an episode of Reverie Disorder. They’ll steadily get worse and worse, and you won’t have any control over them.”

“So it’s just involuntary daydreaming, then?” Hikaru asked. “I don’t see why that’s a — oh. During emergencies, right?”

Daisuke nodded. “Good. Now you understand. The trigger that makes some people much more susceptible to Reverie Disorder than others is trauma, which you have freshly gone through and are therefore even more vulnerable to. This is why the Mindscape is not mentioned in public texts and taught only by mentors and handlers. There is no cure, but there are a few types of treatment, so to speak, and I’ll handle your treatment personally.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What is it?” 

“You will close your eyes and try to fall into a trance, and then you’ll try to stop me from punching you.” 

“W-Wait, that...seriously? Why?” 

Daisuke smirked. “See if you can’t figure that out over the course of the training. But I’ll leave that for later. Third ground rule — You do not attempt to explore your Aberration in any way except theoretically without my direct supervision.” 

“Why?” Hikaru said, much less accusingly this time. 

“Because use of your particular Aberration will quite literally drain your life away.”

She blanched. “Wait, what?”

He regarded her evenly. “Invocations — that’s what it’s called when you use Etheria for a technique — don’t give you your Etheria back.” 

“How — I — so when I ‘invocated’, I...?” 

“Yes, you lost some of your life.”

She flinched. “How...how much?” 

“Turn around.” 

This time, she didn’t bother to object, just doing as he said. She cringed when his hand pressed against her back, but didn’t move. 

“Hm?” he muttered.

“What?”

“You’re positive you Invocated?”

She nodded. “I did it exactly how you said, and it felt how you described, too. A warm flood of energy straight from my core.” 

“We’ll have to test that later, then.” He took his hand off of her back, letting her turn around. “Don’t let that trick you into thinking that you can do it freely, though. Invocations are still dangerous in a very different way, so you will not do it without my express permission unless it is to save your life, and only your life. Understood?”

Hikaru nodded.

“Fourth rule. Anything I teach you stays with you until I approve you to teach it. I won’t have the time to teach you many things in detail, so if you want to understand more deeply beyond just understanding why something works, you’ll need to do it yourself. Consider them research projects.”

“Fifth rule. Unless you get my express permission to talk about it, you do not share the details of your Aberration or your training with anyone.”

He nodded. “That’s all I can think of. I reserve the right to add more rules, but they will be as fair as I can keep them. So. Will you become my apprentice, Hikaru Kozakura?” 

Hikaru regarded him suspiciously, but gave up after a moment. In the end, there wasn’t really a choice — she was being railroaded into this path, after all. 

But, she hoped, this path might lead her to the strength she needed to make sure that no one could choose for her ever again.

Silently, she stuck out her hand. Daisuke nodded approvingly, clasping her hand in his. 

They shook. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> —
> 
> And that’s the end of Defiance...for now! You’ll get to see the second half to this in a few Acts. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Now, we’ll be returning to the main story... 


End file.
